Using the ATTO Disk Benchmark first we find our test HDD yielding upwards of 67MB/s in both sequential read and write speed. Given that this is a traditional 3½" SATA 3.0Gb/s hard drive that is about two years old, we know that these speeds most likely represent the maximum performance of the drive itself. By way of comparison, with the Crucial SATA 6.0Gb/s SSD we see write speeds up to 120MB/s and read speeds just over 180MB/s, quite a bit faster than the HDD. However those speeds fall far short of the performance we know this drive is capable of (150MB/s write, 370MB/s read) when the C300 is connected directly to a SATA 6.0Gb/s port.

Crystal Disk Mark confirms what we observed with ATTO, namely the regular HDD maxing out around 67MB/s, with the SSD reporting 120MB/s write, 176MB/s read. Again these SSD results do not match our testing of the drive independently using a SATA 6.0Gb/s port. It seems we may be hitting some sort of bandwidth limitation of the BlacX.

HD Tune reveals a result of 61MB/s average for the SATA HDD, graphed with the typical falling curve indicative of a traditional hard drive performance. The HD Tune graph for the Crucial SSD however draws the absolute flattest, most consistent line average that I've ever seen, fixed at only 169MB/s. Just as we observed with the other benchmarks, performance results for the Crucial SSD are far from where they should be for this drive.